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Mark Burnett is breaking his silence on all those The Apprentice rumors about embarrassing Donald Trump tapes. They also addressed reports the British producer of the show threatened staff with a $5-million lawsuit if they leaked the tapes.

Turns out, Burnett, creator of “The Apprentice“, and MGM, which owns the rights to “The Apprentice” and “Celebrity Apprentice“, will not be releasing any footage.

In a joint statement with MGM Holdings Inc, who acquired his production company, Mr Burnett said: “Despite reports to the contrary, Mark Burnett does not have the ability nor the right to release footage or other material from The Apprentice“.

Calls for the show’s makers to release unflattering footage it may have of Mr Trump gathered momentum on social media following Friday’s leak.

Mr Trump has since dismissed his comments as “locker room banter”, using his debate with rival Hilary Clinton over the weekend to apologise: “I’m not proud of it”.

“When you’re a star, they let you do it”. “Grab them by the p–. You can do anything”. Trump was on the show for 14 seasons.

The brewing controversy over unaired Apprentice tapes began last week after The Associated Press reported that former crew members, editors and contestants claimed Trump “repeatedly demeaned women with sexist language … rated female contestants by the size of their breasts and talked about which ones he’d like to have sex with”.

“We were in the boardroom one time, figuring out who to blame for the task, and [Trump] just stopped in the middle and pointed to someone and said, ‘You’d f-k her, wouldn’t you?”

Trump’s campaign denied the allegations.

ABC News Chief Legal Analyst Dan Abrams said on “Good Morning America” today that the statement doesn’t reveal much about the terms of the deal regarding Burnett.

“Recent developments have (led) many to believe that video footage of Donald Trump exists which proves that the person we have all come to know over the past year is not the person that he truly is – footage that reinforces what we have all just recently begun to see more clearly”, Aaron Holman of Somerville wrote on the GoFundMe page.